


Idols and Inspiration

by jane_potter



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-06
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 04:08:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at immortals through the eyes of art history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idols and Inspiration

**Author's Note:**

> Written for oxoniensis' Porn Battle 11. Prompts: museum, ancient. What it says on the tin.

They have not, over the centuries, been very subtle.

Crowley always insists that the Stele of the Snake-King is his. Aziraphale tells him not to be ridiculous, the cobra was a hieroglyph, not a depiction, but Crowley counters that they weren't hanging around each other much back then and Aziraphale has no idea what he was up to in Abydos that century. All the angel can stuffily retort is that nudity doesn't count in animal form.

In the Greek antiquities, Crowley's got his face on a krater, and Aziraphale lays claim to an amphora that used to have his name on it, though the clay is chipped. He swears he can still taste the wine, sweet and dry on his tongue, a cool indulgence that washed away the daily scents of clay dust and olives and sweating slaves out in the street. The wine from the cellar of Crowley's villa was better, but they didn't speak much back then, and for good reason; the only reason Aziraphale ever tasted it at all was because Crowley offered him some in a supposed peace overture that turned out to be a poisoning attempt. (1)

They always pause at the staircase to look up at the Winged Victory and her rumpled plumage. "The artist was generous," Crowley snickers, knowing full well that Aziraphale wasn't even female at the time.

"That was me," Crowley insists, among the Roman marble nudes.

"It was not."

"Was too."

"Muffed the effort, did you?" Aziraphale inquires delicately, pointedly examining the somnolent statue's curved penis and full, soft breasts. It is a rather appealing idea, though, now that he considers it.

Crowley leers. "Made it special."

"That is not you."

"All right, no. But I got Bernini to add the mattress."

Aziraphale always tries to skip past the Renaissance, murmuring about tea and cream buns. Crowley won't have any of it, because that was the angel's _best_ century. Plump and cherubic was in, and Aziraphale had fun at the time, the big liar.

"If the cherubim in Heaven could see this," snickers Crowley.

"They're _putti_ ," Aziraphale says, with the dull ire of someone whose irritation on that particular topic has been festering for centuries. "Not cherubim. I was a cherub, I ought to know."

"Four heads," Crowley agrees absently. "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my."

Aziraphale looks at him blankly. After a nonplussed moment, he manages, "All I'm saying is that Donatello has a lot to answer for."

Everywhere they look, there are wings and breasts and robes that didn't actually fall open as often as the paintings would have you think, but it makes Crowley giggle like an idiot to know how many people walking through see his angel naked in ten different skins every day. His secret favourite, though, is the painting he's seen played out a hundred times in real life, waking up to sunlight falling on the plump, pale shoulders of an angel perched on the edge of his white sheets.

"They've practically turned that picture into an idol, you know," Crowley says slyly.

Aziraphale sniffs. "It's nothing of the sort. I can't help it if they connect the messenger with the message when they get divine inspiration." But secretly he's pleased, because he was actually rather slim that decade.

Crowley is in the back of _The Turkish Baths_ , no matter how much he insists otherwise, period. (2)

Unlike the rest of the touristy crowds, they stroll past _la Joconde_ without a second glance. They also give some of the Italian Renaissance a miss, because Aziraphale sees enough of Gabriel and Michael in real life, thank you very much. They bicker and flirt over the eroticism of 19th century statuary, neither of them quite sure who inspired what, sometimes.

The basement of the Louvre, though, is where the best stuff is, the stuff nobody sees. Aziraphale blushingly calls it his error bin- divine inspiration doesn't work so well when the angel has something decidedly undivine on his mind at the time. Some of it's risqué, and some just lewd (3), but oh, it's them. Their faces, their bodies twisted together in slick oils and bold impasto, writhing in glistering marble, all heavy curves and long sinews and hot, brash embraces.

Aziraphale pushes Crowley up against a wall and guides him into position like a sculptor's model, tipping his chin up to kiss, wet and deep, then tilting his head to the side to get at the cords of his throat, which strain as Crowley swallows hard. Crowley rumples the angel's hair, snaps away their clothing (to half-hearted protests), pinches and claws a pink flush into soft skin. Short gasps and muffled whispers arrange the scene; they prepare the canvas of skin with oil and saliva, finger painting open-mouthed ecstasy with broad strokes.

In the climate controlled darkness, surrounded by echoes of selves-that-were, they make more art that nobody, for once, is around to capture.

  
(1) To be fair, Crowley never felt quite right about that; it was just that he hadn't actually fought with the angel in years, and he thought he ought to try  _something_ before Downstairs started getting suspicious. Turns out it was nothing but a waste of good wine that probably set the beginning of the Arrangement back a couple centuries farther than it needed to be.   
(2) He wasn't supposed to have breasts that century.  
(3) Crowley is impressed by the angel's apparently very active imagination.

List of the artworks:

[ _Stele of the Snake-King_](http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/WF002091.html), c. 3000 BC, Egypt  
[ _Dionysos and his thiasos_ krater](http://0.tqn.com/d/ancienthistory/1/0/S/c/2/Dionysos_thiasos_Louvre.jpg) by Euxitheos and Euphronios, c. 510 BC, Greece  
Random amphora  
[ _The Winged Victory of Samothrace_](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_iBl_XrDIoFM/S_ss-Hs6SBI/AAAAAAAAALo/J2sWNvdHOos/s1600/Winged+Victory+of+Samothrace+tattoo.jpg), c. 190 BC, Greece  
 _[Hermaphrodite](http://www.allposters.co.uk/-sp/Hermaphrodite-Sleeping-Marble-2nd-century-AD-Imperial-Roman-from-Baths-of-Diocletian-Rome-Posters_i6236268_.htm) [Sleeping](http://www.flickr.com/photos/21609220@N00/2510190212)_ , c. 2nd century AD, Rome  
[ _The Valpincon Bather_](http://www.fineartprintsondemand.com/artists/ingres/valpincon_bather.htm) by Ingres, 1808, France  
[ _The Turkish Baths_](http://www.reproarte.com/picture/Jean-Auguste-Dominique_Ingres/The+Turkish+Bath+/6252.html) by Ingres, 1862, France


End file.
